tyranny
When tyranny is called in highly derogatory sense a considered as illegitimate tyranny and despotism of a ruler or group. The term refers to the ancient tyranny , the rule of a single ruler in a polis of the Greek-speaking world in the period from the 7th to the 3rd century BC , achieved through the violent overthrow of the state order . In the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , tyranny is described as oppression in the absence of the rule of law against which people have the right to revolt.
Today forms of rule with brutal autocrats at the top are called tyranny ; the meaning goes in the direction of tyranny , i.e. a dictatorship , of which, for example, the later American President James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers (number 47) in 1787/88 : "The accumulation of all violence, the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elected, can rightly be explained as the precise definition of tyranny. "
Based on this development of the term, a tyrant is understood today in a figurative sense as a domineering or strict person (e.g. family tyrant).
literature
- 2008: Caroline Thompson: The tyranny of love: Perfect upbringing and the ambivalence of our feelings , Antje, Verlag, ISBN 978-3888975288
- 2014: Vladimir Palko: The lions are coming: Why Europe and America are heading for a new tyranny , fe-medienvlg, ISBN 978-3863570729
- 2018: Timothy Snyder: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons for Resistance , CH Beck, ISBN 978-3406711466
- 2019: Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt: How Democracies Die: And What We Can Do About It , Pantheon Verlag, ISBN 978-3570554081
Web links
Remarks
- ↑ “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny” ( see The Federalist No. 47 , accessed June 8, 2007)